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OAS says reforms announced by Atamaint will make independent election observation impossible
Posted On 31 Jan 2019
Ecuadornews:
The Organization of American States (OAS) denied Wednesday that it had violated the regulations of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Ecuador during its observation mission of the February 2018 referendum, as denounced by the president of the electoral body.
The OAS also regretted that, for that reason, the CNE had decided not to invite him to observe the upcoming local elections in March and expressed concern at the statements of the body’s president, Diana Atamaint, about a change in the regulations regarding the electoral observation in the country, according to a letter sent to the head of the electoral function.
The changes that Atamaint intends to make include that the observation missions cannot interview CNE officials, national authorities, party leaders and candidates, nor register or report disputes, irregular situations or conflicts during the electoral elections.
According to the OAS, this event “would make any kind of independent and impartial electoral observation impossible”.
In the letter, the supranational body said that the work of the observation mission of the popular consultation of 2018 fulfilled its work “in strict compliance with the agreement of immunities and privileges signed with the Ecuadorian government and with the agreement of procedures signed with the CNE. “
The president of the electoral body said that the mission “has to monitor the election process and not the previous process.”
In this regard, the OAS recalled that the procedural agreement agreed with the CNE establishes that it will guarantee, “during the electoral process and the periods before and after it,” free mobility throughout Ecuadorian territory, as well as access to the mission to all the areas of the organisms that are part of the electoral system.
He also stated that the mission “is totally and completely in line with the methodology implemented by the OAS in 27 other countries in the region, in more than 260 Electoral Observation Missions.”
Finally, he mentioned that Ecuador is the country belonging to the OAS that has received the most observation missions since the beginning of the program in 1968, a total of twenty.
The popular consultation of February 4, 2018, convened by the Lenin Moreno Government, addressed issues of corruption, re-election, surplus value, nature, mining and sexual crimes against minors. In the core, it repealed the possibility of indefinite re-election of the presidents of the Republic, and authorized the appointment of a Council of Transitional Citizen Participation that reorganized the public bodies until then dominated by the correísmo. (I)
